Mob chieftain's return sparks concerns

Rob Lamberti, Special to the Toronto Sun

First posted: Sunday, August 05, 2012 03:42 PM

Ontario’s anti-Mafia police wonder if more than leaves will drop this fall.

Embattled Montreal mob chieftain Vito Rizzuto returns to Canada from his Florence, Colo., jail cell in October and police here suspect there will be strikes against his opponents.

The 66-year-old lost much in the past few years as his underworld empire came under attack and crumbled while he was incarcerated.

The Sicilian-born capo lost life-long friends and allies in the onslaught apparently orchestrated by crime groups in Quebec and Ontario.

But closer to his heart, his son, Nicolo Jr., was assassinated in 2009, his brother-in-law, Paolo Renda, vanished two years ago and is presumed dead, and Vito’s father, Nicolo, was also killed in 2010.

There have been a few apparent retaliatory strikes, including the murder of Salvatore Montagna last November.

Police experts suspect crime groups in Ontario had a role in the power push against Rizzuto that began in 2009 and was apparently fronted by Montagna — an acting boss of the New York Bonanno crime family who was deported to Montreal by U.S. authorities.

Initially, Rizzuto’s move into Ontario was marked with the murders of Carmen Barillaro and Johnny “Pops” Papalia in 1997.

Police also know there was a hit list that wasn’t completed. The list included a number of other GTA and Niagara area Calabrian mobsters, particularly four related to three Violi brothers who were killed between 1976 and 1980 during the Rizzuto family’s rise to power in Montreal.

Rocco Violi was killed in 1980 by a sniper’s bullet while as he sat to dinner in his Montreal-area home, a scene to be repeated 30 years later in the murder of the senior Nicolo Rizzuto.

Vito Rizzuto was sent to jail in 2007 on a racketeering conviction for his role in the 1981 murders of three mutinous New York-area Bonanno captains.

His return will probably be met with much preparation by U.S. and Canadian authorities, but with little fanfare. Most Canadians will not even know when he arrives, but when he does, he’ll be a free man.

What awaits him in Montreal appears to be a disheveled organization and a moldering arrest warrant issued by the Italian government for money laundering.

But the ranks of the organization may be boosted, as some of his trusted lieutenants currently in jail — including the influential Francesco Acardi — will be eligible for parole.

Also, authorities don’t expect Italy to act on the warrant.

Police in Ontario expect bloodshed, retaliation for the losses the Rizzuto enterprise suffered, but a source says Vito doesn’t have to be out of jail for that.

“People know what they have to do,” the source said. “Vito’s presence is not necessary for vengeance. That’s the mistake people make.”

The assault on the Rizzuto crime group began with police projects: R.I.P. headed by York Regional Police which aimed at Rizzuto’s Ontario operation in 2001; and RCMP-led Colisée in 2006, which targeted the crime group’s leadership.

Then came the underworld attacks on the Rizzuto clan, launched a few months after Montagna arrived in Montreal in April 2009.

U.S. authorities deported Montagna, 40 — dubbed by New York media as the Baby Bambino because of his youth — who told authorities he planned to retire.

Instead, he apparently aligned himself with GTA-area Calabrian crime families and those in Quebec who moved away from Rizzuto.

Six people were arrested in Montagna’s slaying, including Raynald Desjardins, 58.

While he was known to have strong ties to Rizzuto, authorities aren’t sure where his loyalties lie.

The suspect and his body guard were also targets of an attempted hit in Laval in 2011.

Also charged are Vittorio Mirarchi, 34, of Ste. Adele, Que., Felice Racaniello, 27, of Montreal, and Jack Arthur Simpson, 69, of Ile Vaudry. Names of two others were not released.

Police sources here say they’re interested in Mirarchi’s alleged role. He has close ties to Calabrian groups in Ontario, including one Toronto-area businessman who was on the alleged Rizzuto clan’s hit list in the 1990s.

What investigators don’t know is if Montagna made a move on his own or if he tried to muscle out an ally, prompting retaliation.

A source indicated Montagna, although respected, wasn’t considered tough enough to wage a protracted street war.

“Sal wasn’t a trigger man,” a source said.

“He’s not the type of guy to get involved in a war,” added the source. “He had his own crew with the ability to move drugs ... but he’s not the right guy for a violent street drug war.”

The source said authorities often can do little but wait for who is assassinated.

“I cannot see there being vengeance in Montreal unless there’s blood in Toronto,” the source said.

But police sources expect that any retribution has to be measured so that it won’t upset the mob’s business enterprises.

Strikes are expected to be surgical in nature “and then things will fall back into place,” said the source.

What’s confusing the landscape for authorities are three GTA murders since last year of men with ties to traditional organized crime.

The three are known as drug rip-off artists, but the question is: Who pulled the triggers? Was it the Mafia — and then were they from Montreal or local? Or was it an East European crime group?

“Not paying a drug debt is a death sentence,” the source said.

Add to the mix, organized crime activity in Italy, the source said.

The source said it seems impossible that the way the ‘Ndrangheta — the name of the Calabrian mob — is “intertwined around the world, it’s hard to assume leaders in Italy didn’t have knowledge or a role” in what’s happening in Montreal.

Authorities have recently seen increased traffic of senior ‘Ndrangheta clan members from Calabria to the GTA, leaving police with the impression that what happens in Canada is important to the worldwide operation of the Calabrian mob.

“The Italian (authorities) find that a lot of major decisions that affect Calabria” are being finalized here in the Toronto area.

“Several key decisions in Italy can’t be made without input from Woodbridge,” the source said.

Canada is financially important to the ‘Ndrangheta. It’s seen as a safe financial haven and authorities here haven’t struck as often or as hard as in Italy, where billions of Euros in property and other assets have recently been seized from criminal organizations.

“The longer we wait, (organized crime) legitimize their ventures,” the source said. “They turn their bad money into good.”

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/08/05/mob-chieftains-return-sparks-concerns

interesting article, thanks for posting. Im curious about the"three GTA murders since last year of men with ties to traditional organized crime." The only murder in the GTA in the last year of someone with OC ties I remember was the recent killing in little Italy of John Raposo.

Its funny, I was thinking the exact same thing!
The only O.C non street gang murders for the past 2 years in the GTA have been (to my knowledge) Andy Nguyen, which was like last august and Kosto Barjaktarovic a BC gangster in witness protection who was also killed in 2011.

imo vito is gonna have such a huge target on his back from both the government and rival gangsters that i would be surprised if he's able to stay free/alive for more than a year.

I think people underestimate him. This is a man of an odd charisma, I think he will lead once again and rebuild his empire. People not only fall into line and follow him, but they WANT to follow him.

i think that if the bodies start dropping when he gets out, the law is gonna come at him hard, but i'm not to familiar with law enforcement in the great white north so we will have to wait and see i guess. should be real interesting though!

Agreed!

I was fast to cout him out but that was cause i thought italy was going to he there waiting on him but now.they say italy doesnt want him. He has no reason to get back into the life other than for.revenge, which i dont think is a good i.dea. Ig you got millions and have already killed you main rival what is the point? Nothing will bring his dad and son back, if he was smart he would retire to Brazil and smoke cohibas, drink, and partake in the beautiful women the country.has.to offer. He has nothing to prove and no.reason to try and make another dollar. Why take a chance at spending the rest off your life in jail?

There are plenty of guys in this life style who could easily retire with what they have and life comfortably. But power is addicting, as is money and everything that comes with it. Revenge is one of the reasons, though so is Greed. And lets not forget that these guys are old fashioned Sicilian Mafioso, this is all they know. Retiring isn't an option.

10 years down.....those Brazilian girls must be awfully tempting.

I tremendously respect Rob Lamberti's writing. He retired April 7 of this year but he has continued to write the occasional article for his former employer, the Toronto Sun. For example, he wrote an article this past May about Montreal Mafia associate Juan Ramon Fernandez, aka Joe Bravo, likely trying to return to Canada (again) after having been deported to Spain (again). The article about Bravo contained information recycled from Lamberti's previous articles about him.

Although Lamberti was known during his journalistic career for getting scoops and for finding interesting sources to talk with him, I'm afraid that in this current article about the Montreal Mafia, a) he's merely repeating the untested theory about collaboration between Italian organized-crime groups in Ontario and Quebec to oust the Rizzutos, and b) he's stuck, as are most mobwatchers, with viewing the conflict in Montreal only through a Sicilians-versus-Calabrians framework.

I realize that law enforcement in Ontario, the Mafia inc. co-authors, and countless other experts have clung to the theory about Calabrian mafia groups in Ontario playing a role in the murder and mayhem in Montreal. But I think that with the passage of time, adherents of this theory need to rethink whether it holds water. I don't think it does.

Some members of the Montreal Mafia have had good long-standing relations with the Siderno Group ('ndrangheta) members in the Greater Toronto Area, and I don't mean just Rizzuto clan members. Jos Di Maulo and Tony Volpato are other Montrealers who have decades-long links to Toronto-area mobsters, including Calabrian mafiosi. For decades, Di Maulo has been wrongly identified as having Calabrian ancestry when, in fact, he is molisano. Volpato is northern Italian (born in Padua). Rizzuto clan members and loyalists in Montreal who were known to have ties to the Commisso clan in the Toronto area and to the Commisso clan in Calabria include Vito, Nick Sr., Paolo Renda, Francesco Arcadi (calabrese), and Rocco Sollecito (pugliese). The Caruana-Cun trera clan and Toronto-area Sicilian traffickers such as Ignazio Genua were named along with the aforementioned in the same Direzione Distrettuale Antimafia of Reggio Calabria report on the Operazione Il Crimine. Antonio Cammalleri, who is the head of the Rizzuto organization's Toronto Sicilian Group and also happens to be the uncle of Vito's wife, also has ties to the Commissos in Ontario and in Italy (and is also named in the report). Additionally, there was a significant mob marriage around 2005 or 2006 that involved a Cammalleri marrying into the Commisso family. The Toronto-area Commissos are most likely the top 'ndrangheta group in Ontario.

Bear in mind that we know the Montreal Mafia cultivated contact with the Musitano crime group (Calabrian mafia group) in Hamilton in the 1990s and that Francesco Arcadi was the Montreal Mafia's key liaison with this group up until 2005 or 2006. There is no definitive proof, as Lamberti and others opine or assert, that Vito Rizzuto and others in Montreal asked the Musitanos to kill John Papalia of Hamilton. One motive for the Musitanos' killing Papalia, and it may be the only motive, is clear: there was a significant gambling debt owed to Papalia. While I realize there are often a number of motives for whacking an organized-crime figure, I still think that pinning Papalia's murder on the Rizzuto organization's desire to expand into Ontario is ill considered -- if you were to do that, you might as well argue that most of the Calabrian mafia groups in Ontario, i.e., the seven clans of the Toronto-area Siderno Group and the Hamilton-area Musitano group, were also in on the plan to kill Papalia.

So despite the fact that Papalia and then, soon after, Carmen Barillaro, were murdered on orders of the Musitanos --- two murders never avenged -- many experts in Ontario and Quebec have had no trouble asserting that the Papalia group (American LCN crew for most or all of its history) agreed to collaborate with the Musitano group; and that these two groups also joined forces with the Luppino group (Calabrian mafia group that has been in the orbit of the Buffalo Family for much or all of its history) to take over the Montreal Mafia or to order the murders of Rizzuto clan members or both.

If the experts had bothered to examine the relations between the Montreal Mafia and certain Calabrian crime groups in Ontario, the experts would have seen that the theory of an Ontario takeover of Italian organized crime in Montreal is not only far flung but also counterintuitive. Yes, of course the organized-crime landscape could have changed in the mid-2000s in such a way that the Rizzuto organization no longer had allies in the Calabrian crime groups in Ontario; however, the intelligence from Italian law enforcement suggests otherwise regarding the links the Montreal Mafia has to the Commissos in Ontario and in Italy.

I have to admit a fascination with the Calabrian mafia groups operating in Canada, especially the ones that hew to 'ndrangheta rituals and codes. Yet at the same time I realize that the notion that 'ndrangheta groups always get along with one another for the sake of the greater goal is patently absurd. Everyone on this forum knows that disparate organized-crime groups are always butting heads with one another. Why should all the Calabrian mafia groups in Ontario get along swimmingly?

In the 1970s, the Toronto-area Commissos were not on good terms with the Violi brothers (Calabrian mafiosi part of the Montreal decina). While we know that Rocco Remo Commisso was in Montreal when Paolo Violi was killed in 1978 -- and that this was probably a coincidence -- there are two books that mention, to a greater or lesser degree, the tensions between the Commissos and the Violis. Four or five pages are devoted to this conflict in Mafia Enforcer, a 1987 book that suggests Rocco Remo's presence in Montreal when Violi was killed was no accident; and a paragraph in the 1986 book Le Crime Organisé à Montréal (1940/1980), by Pierre de Champlain, mentions the displeasure the Toronto-area Commissos had with Paolo Violi for violating 'ndrangheta protocol: Violi enlisted a Commisso in a break-and-enter caper in Toronto without seeking permission first.

Some newspaper articles from a few years ago reported that Vincenzo "Jimmy" DeMaria, a leader of a Siderno Group clan in the Toronto area, may have been making a power play in Toronto's camera di controllo, the 'ndrangheta body, or board, responsible for settling disputes among disparate local groups. Was the reporting accurate? What was DeMaria pushing for? Did he want the Siderno Group to distance itself from the Rizzuto organization? Did he want to topple Cosimo Commisso, the capo crimine close to Nick Rizzuto Sr. and Vito, whose authority was final? What was the consequence of Calabrian-born Giuseppe Coluccio's being given a seat on the 'ndrangheta board? Were DeMaria and others opposed to or in favour of this decision?

Failure to acknowledge the historical infighting between and among 'ndrangheta groups/clans in Ontario is as big a mistake as failing to see the infighting that has racked the Montreal Mafia in the last seven years.

I have no problem, as a native Torontonian, declaring that Montreal is still the epicentre of Italian organized crime in Canada. How many posts are there on this forum and other organized-crime forums about current Italian organized-crime activity in Toronto and other cities in Ontario? How many posts about such activity in Montreal and its environs? The argument that Calabrian organized-crime figures in Ontario are more low key than their Sicilian counterparts is ridiculous, as is the corollary that Calabrian mafia groups in Ontario are more powerful than the Montreal Mafia group, which we now know, if we've been doing our homework, has been constituted by individuals whose Italian ancestry descends from regions other than Sicily and Calabria, had never really had pure Sicilian and Calabrian factions in its early history (for Luigi Greco had wrongly been identified as being Sicilian-born when in fact he was born in Canada and had ancestry from Molise), and had seen such factions fall by the wayside by the end of the 1980s. The idea that the new godfather of the Montreal Mafia must be a Sicilian or a Calabrian is erroneous. I especially find fanciful all declarations that this individual is or will be a Cotroni.

Despite the Mafia inc. book being filled with interesting intelligence, a historical background to the internal wrangling in Montreal, and details hard to find anywhere else, I have known for some time that the co-authors made egregious errors. Anyone with any sort of grudge against the Rizzuto organization was identified by the authors as a Calabrian. Sergio Piccirilli was identified as a Calabrian who met with his Calabrian godfather in Toronto, Franco Mattoso, about killing Nick Rizzuto Sr. And yet there doesn't seem to be any evidence to support the assertion that either Piccirilli or Mattoso has Calabrian ancestry.

Power will not be consolidated in Montreal for several more years. As always, I have more questions than answers about what has been going on there or what will happen. While I can't be entirely sure my opinion about non-involvement of Ontario groups in Montreal's affairs is accurate, I'm fairly certain that law-enforcement groups, organized-crime reporters, organized-crime authors, and recreational mobwatchers have not looked back as far as is needed to see that they have been viewing the situation in Montreal through a distorted lens.

I appreciate the time you put into that analysis and I thank you for sharing it

That's an interesting angle. And I do agree that many sources tend to paint him with those 'charismatic' and 'diplomatic' attributes. But FWIW, A LOT happened since he went away. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if he managed to reconstitute the Rizzuto name and lasts for another decade at the top of Montreal mob activities...or if he's whacked within a week of getting home. One thing I'm almost as sure as a guy in my position can be sure of; there's going to by at least another couple of bodies dropping in Montreal.

Another great post by antimafia. Thanks.

I just had a thought that maybe Vito will return to NYC after he is sent back to Canada and regroups here for a few months then returns there....

Regroups in new York ?. For what?. To learn how to be a rat. What a joke. The guy has international contacts. New York are a bunch of double crossers. Sciasia was killed because fat Massino was jealous of him. Everyone up here knows that. Massino felt threatened by Sciasias global respect. Bunch of rats bonnanos. There ratting fucked up all here in Montreal. Find me a made guy up here who ever ratted? None.

hey i have to agree with you that i talked to a few guys that were in jail with some bonnanos and the were nothing but crybabies and rats. Now im reading this from you in Montreal and i believe it. Where theres smoke theres fire

Rizzuto wouldn't have many friends in New York, nor would he even be allowed to enter the United States. Your border patrol is so picky some times!
If he was gonna go anywhere to hide out, it'd be South America.

There's no hideout. After sal got whacked everything settled down. Vitos family began resurfacing and rumours from the Italian community are that many are awaiting him to restablish. Even the law abiding citizens want him back. Including our very own Montreal police indirectly. He kept a certain calm among various criminal groups.

Interesting analysis Antimafia, thanks for sharing.